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How Should Future Creature Votes Be Managed? Creature votes, a unique way of not just introducing more creatures into Ark Survival Evolved, but also promoting the community's ideas and suggestions. With Extinction's vote now over, will there be future creature votes for ASA in the meantime for Ark 2? If so, there are some benefits and negativities from each creature vote that should be noted for alterations or acknowledgment. Whether it be dealing with or finding a compromise to: the repeatability of certain creatures across multiple voting systems that impacts variability or block new entries, the discussion of certain abilities, influencer influence, blind posting, Apex and therapod stereotypes, PVE and PVP conflicting viewpoints, early votes receiving more attention, and the voting system being based on upvotes or bandwagons, rather than ideas, with some players suggesting that the voting counter should be hidden and the entire focus should be on the creature itself; rather than the votes. These are the main problems associated with the Ark creature votes that have impacted not just the community's views of the overall system, but also how people participate in them. Some players want fantasy creatures being added, which should these be part of their own submission system when compared to prehistoric animals, rather than being blocked? What about clone creatures, or multiple alternating renditions of the same species of animal? While there are rules currently in place for the Ark creature voting system, how should they be dealt with? Should future voting systems focus on not just one spotlight creature, how about the top three, kind of like with Lost Island back in 2021 (the Carcharodontosaurus, Dinopithecus and Sinomacrops were all added). Another detail would be influencers. Influencers have had their impacts on the creature submission system as well, impacting voting rates by some rigging votes with their "influence", this can be seen during the first creature vote with both Dinopithecus and Sinomacrops, causing lots of controversy in the process. Others on platforms like Youtube try to bribe or instigate viewers to vote for specific creatures, and downvote others. This happened with the Tanystropheus, Dire Otter, Sivatherium, Armadillosuchus, the Razanandrongobe, the Myotragus, Giant Bison, the Bastion Beetle and Gorgonopsis with upvotes and demands for inclusion, and others downvoting the Maevia Jumping Spider, Shastasaurus, Dinopithecus, Yi Qi and Rhyniognatha. Most of this comes down to the details mentioned above, with some influencers also go out of there way to vote for animals that might be considered the "worst" of the bunch. In my opinion, influencers should be allowed to participate, but with the voting counter taken into consideration, influencers should not be able to rig creature votes with their "influence", preventing not just the community from having a say in inclusion of creatures, but also creating more problems, criticism and hate within Ark's community. There are countless other topics to mention and describe, including the fantasy animals like golems, dragons, hydras, hippocampus, titans and elementals that could be added to Ark, or the stereotypes and the viewpoint of people upvoting for "Alpha" or food-chain dominate creatures. I personally have no say on the matter, rather if fantasy creatures could be added, how should these creatures be considered? In conclusion, this is from both my own experience observing and participating with the creature voting systems and my team's ideas on how this system should be considered for the future. I would like to hear your comments, suggestions and opinions on this topic. Thanks, MonstersHunters

I have been looking at these votes for a while and I've noticed that a lot of good creatures have been left behind, and several ones people feel like should be staple examples for being added regardless of creature Votes. Like the Gorgonopsid, the Nothosaurus and other sauropods, Raptors or raptorlike relatives, the Deinocheirus (Which Is so liked by many dinosaur lovers I'm sure it will get in at some point) etc. I realized that the Free DLC Maps we've been getting since Lost Island have gotten 3 new true dinos each (true because crystal Isles had wyverns but those were variants of a new variant of wyvern...arguably not even a new creature and the tropeo which was a pathetic half baked reskinned Tapejara. If they did why not give the old maps the same treatment, we don't need to try so hard to adhere to themes and the style of the map when many of these maps are built to be enjoyed with multiple types of content anyway or as hubs even. I wish for a dedicated enhanced Aberration Map or a 2nd chance for Genesis's cool creatures and biomes eve if the devs failed it, everytime I see new free dlc maps but I know it's unlikely to happen. So why not give those some love by giving them not 1, but maybe 2 or even 3 new dinos to populate them and flesh out their unique biomes, ecosystems and themes. For those that got only one, or none at all, especially, this would be a great opportunity to breathe new life into them as they're getting refurbished In the new version. What would be cooler than getting on The Center on ASA and realizing you have a the brand new Nothosaurus, and 2 other dinos to tame now? This could encourage players who have never played on it to go try it. Or make it more appealing to old ones. Other good ideas for that map would be a new unique flier or pterosaur perhaps, a Raptor relative, hadrosaur or sauropod reflecting the original dinosaur heavy theme of Ark before fantasy creatures and many pre-dinosaur animals were added like Lystros. Valguero could also use some more stuff, the map feels a bit empty imo, but preference aside it only has the Deinonychus, it'd be a good map to add another spinosaurid or a medium sized carnivore like Ceratosaurus, or even the Deinocheirus. Ragnarok could have had another added, but I will say I'm both dissatisfied and glad we got the Gigantoraptor, disappointed because it wasn't on Scorched, where I argue it fits better for just a pure Scorched map than just the biome, but that it likely won out because the Fasolsuchus won the Scorched one. Leaving it out from actually the map I feel would have suited it better. I think the stranded nature Scorched makes you feel suited the purpose and strengths of the Gigantoraptor better as well as several other creatures in the vote like Sivatherium, the Cheetah, Maevia Eureka (The jumping spider) and even the Armadillosuchus which could have just been toned down and I guarantee would not be as busted as its concepts were showing. The devs may hit with the accuracy of a drunk king Kong trying to swing at the empire state building with a bus without falling over but 50/50 the monkey gets his pinata. Unless your the Fasolasuchus in which they absolutely threw that thing in a flaming dumpster and gave up imo. They totally skipped on the sand sailboat saddle concept for a probably big, slow, status effect cameo for a new acid ability. Like we needed that. Crystal Isles may have its wyverns and Tropeo but they leave a lot to be desired, if any map needs interesting semi aquatic, fantasy themed and crazy dinos it's that map. That's why I think these votes should give the devs the incentive to add more creatures. They already added 2 (3, really if you count the Fenrirs) on their own for Lost Island and Fjordur, just have the winner for the vote win like usual, but have the devs get the ideas from the top 10 or something. While I know that'd be controversial on its own since I know lots of people don't want the devs to have that kind of say as to what other creatures get added like that, there could be other ways including 2nd place and 3rd place rounds afterwards. So that people don't only get the first 3 highest winners and can calculate and figure out what they like the most if something loses after the last. Another way to implement these creatures that may be done by the community anyway is mods. Obviously. You'd think I'm stupid for suggesting it. But I'm talking about how Jurassic World Evolution does it. Like how they sell dinosaur packs for the game. Or like the Sims do it. The reason is they are fully made and tailored for the parameters for the game but are additional content, meaning you don't have to use them if you don't want to. Because these are optional DLC they would not appear on official servers and would require hosting or joining one or playing Singleplayer. These creatures would be optional content that are made specifically for the game to be enhanced if enabled. Preserving original Ark while letting people choose to add more things in a style that fits with Ark without needing to rely on a modder knowing or understanding this. I know I probably just sound like a person who is annoyed so many creatures from the votes fall away and only one gets in while I love so many of the dino concepts but it truly is a desire to see more dinos actually fitting with Arks values in terms of stats and the way the creatures work as opposed to most modded creatures being op or on the stronger side of the food chain. While I really hope they give us tools to adjust stats of all spawns for species and toggles for things like Alphas (including one's we don't have, Alpha Vanilla Therizinos anyone?) Teks and other variants including disabling annoyances like the purposeless Titanosaur and maybe even spiders for arachnophobics, this is a way those creative and administrative tools could be expressed.